DPI trying to dictate to private schools

By Brother Bob Smith

Published on: 2/28/2012

The issue of school choice has been at the forefront of political debate, media attention and community discussion for a number of reasons in recent years, and that's good. This successful program has provided hundreds of lower-income southeastern Wisconsin families with the opportunity to choose a school that best fits their educational needs, and the more attention, review and consideration it receives, the better.

Now comes debate as to whether special education students have similar choice options and discussion about whether the program should grow, how students qualify and providing equal per-pupil reimbursements to public and private choice schools. But most troubling to me and Messmer Catholic Schools, however, is a topic that hasn't been openly discussed but alluded to by actions of the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.

As you may know, DPI recently filed a waiver request with the U.S. Department of Education seeking to be excused from the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Instead, DPI proposed its own accountability standards and intervention procedures for under-performing Wisconsin schools.

We agree that accountability is crucial for all schools and intervention is important when a school is not performing. However, as the first religious school to ever participate in a voucher program and one that has a graduation rate more than twice that of Milwaukee Public Schools at a much lower per-pupil reimbursement rate, we are extremely concerned about other elements of that DPI waiver application. On a fundamental level, private schools do not operate in the same fashion as public schools.

Over the years, there has been an alarming trend and repeated attempts by DPI to treat private and public schools as one in the same. While both private and public schools can agree on the shared goal of rigorous education, high school graduation and post-secondary educational attainment, they achieve these results in very different ways and to varying degrees. The focus ultimately must center on college or post-secondary education and student performance in college. Parents then must be empowered to choose which institution they believe is best suited to prepare their children for the future.

DPI must relent from its attempts to intervene and dictate operational standards for private schools. At its core, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program reflects a philosophical belief that parents are best able to identify the standard of instruction and model best suited toward the needs of their children.

The DPI waiver request and inclusion of private school data reflects another attempt by DPI to impose a standard of operation and control over private schools.

In the waiver request, DPI included a listing of under-performing public schools as the federal government requires but also chose, on its own, to include a list of voucher schools that it ranked as under-performing. One might think, what's the big deal? But it is, when you consider that DPI used skewed data for the rankings. The public schools and private charter schools rankings, while lumped into one list, is not an apples-to-apples comparison.

Differences between the two sets of data include when student test scores begin to count and what student test scores were included in the grade average - a whole class or only select students. That coupled with the state's intervention policy for under-performing schools raises a concern that DPI once again is attempting to gain more control over private choice schools.

We support accountability, but accountability has to compare apples to apples. We support intervention for under-performing schools, but that has to come with a very clear understanding of what determines success for students. High school graduation and college attainment? Or random standardized tests? Morphing these issues into the waiver and injecting private voucher school data into rankings when it was not required or requested by the federal government are suspect.

We urge the state and its leaders to look at the waiver application, what it says and what it implies and to take steps now to ensure there is clarity, fairness and clear lines on authority at DPI when it comes to the choice program, its schools' accountability when compared to public schools and to ensure a slippery slope is not created to ultimately turn private choice schools into the public school model.

Private choice schools are run differently, and they will never operate like public schools. Trying to indirectly force them to do so through ill-comparisons of data, side-by-side rankings and proposed intervention strategies based on such rankings is the wrong direction when we all want to achieve student success.

Brother Bob Smith is president and CEO of Messmer Catholic Schools, the largest independent school system in Milwaukee. It operates St. Rose and St. Leo's K4-8 school, Messmer Preparatory Catholic School K4-8 and Messmer High School. It operates three campuses serving nearly 1,700 students from 22 Milwaukee area ZIP codes.